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Articles

Every stamp tells a story or more. As such it is pretty amazing that many stamp bloggers (yours truly included) experience writers block from time to time. I think Stephen King, godfather of modern horror literature, nailed the cause perfectly when he once said “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work”.We admit that it is hard, maybe impossible to make any progress unless we feel inspired by the topic. If there is something we’ve learned over the years, it is that looking at alternative angles can make a world of difference in how fun (or unfun) something feels like.

Not so long ago we started experimenting with something we’d describe as mounting collections digitally. In practice, it’s very similar process to creating DIY stamp album pages, but there’s one major exception: the pages are never printed on paper. They remain in digital format all the way, meaning that I even mount my stamps (or more precisely images of them) digitally too… Below is a small teaser how the collection of “Russian Empire era Finland” looks when done like this.

Howard Koslow, a painter and illustrator who for more than four decades designed many of the most recognizable stamps issued by the United States Postal Service, including a 1994 series depicting famous blues and jazz musicians and 30 stamps depicting coastal lighthouses, died on Jan. 25 at his home in Toms River, N.J. He was 91.
The death was confirmed by his daughter Amy-Jo Willig.

While packing for a trip to Toronto in 1978, Irwin Weinberg sent his teenage son Jack to a military surplus store with instructions to buy a pair of handcuffs. On the plane, Mr. Weinberg quietly chained one of his own wrists to his briefcase.

Pictures of the King or Queen have been on a number of New Zealand stamps over the years. When the King or Queen died, a new stamp showing the new King or Queen was usually issued. For example, when Queen Victoria died, a new King of New Zealand, King Edward VII, was crowned. New Zealand stamps with his picture were issued in 1909.

New Zealands first stamps were called the "Full Face Queens" because the picture on them was a front view of the head and shoulders of Queen Victoria. There were three stamps in the Full Face Queen set. They cost 1 penny (1d), 2 penny (2d), and 1 shilling (1s) and were printed in Britain.